Spartans storm Cup Final

The longer John Adams waited for their team bus to arrive Sunday morning, the more frustration built up in Kevin Patterson.
While his teammates were discussing strategy, the senior running back grew incensed. By the time their transportation arrived at 10:15 a.m. - more than three hours after the Spartans checked in at the Ozone Park School, two hours after it was scheduled to arrive and 15 minutes after the scheduled kickoff - he had worked himself into lather.
“It felt like people didn’t care if we got there,” he said. “Like they wanted us to forfeit.”
Patterson let out all of his pent up aggression against Wadleigh in the PSAL Cup Division final, leading the Adams offense to 491 yards of total offense.
Because of that prolific attack, the Spartans won their first gridiron city championship since 1987, out-gunning Wadleigh, 58-42, at Midwood Athletic Complex in Brooklyn Sunday afternoon.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” Coach Gerry Weitzen said.
Patterson rushed for three touchdowns and a career-high 229 yards, quarterback Luis Cerna completed all 10 of his passes for 158 yards and threw two touchdown passes - including one to Patterson - and speedy sophomore Akeeme Chavis accounted for three of his own, two on special teams.
He returned a punt 60 yards to the house the first time he touched the ball, hauled in a 53-yard strike from Cerna and answered a Wadleigh score that cut the Spartans lead to eight, 30 seconds into the fourth quarter with a 92-yard kickoff return.
“I picked the right time to do it,” he said.
The offensive outburst was in stark contrast to the Spartans’ most recent performances.
After starting the season by winning seven straight and scoring at least 30 points six times, Adams hit a rut. They blew a 20-point halftime lead to Wadleigh and were shutout by Bryant. Even the first round of the postseason, when they earned revenge by knocking off the Owls, 16-7, was not the overwhelming performance Weitzen had grown accustomed to.
That changed against the Hellfighters (10-2). The one-two punch of Patterson and fellow senior Darren Baker yielded 333 yards on the ground. When Baker, their bruising fullback, wasn’t breaking tackles and pushing the pile forward, Weitzen was calling Patterson’s number on outside counters. With Baker leading the way, Patterson scored on runs of 36, 30 and 1.
“They are big,” Patterson said, “but they were slow.”
“We ran outside like they weren’t there,” Weitzen said.
When Baker found pay dirt, pushing the lead to 58-36 with 1:51 remaining, the result had become all but decided. Weitzen received a Gatorade bath. His players, the same ones who went 1-17 the two seasons proceeding this one, wildly celebrated for several minutes.
“It’s very different,” Cerna said. “It feels really good.”
Some will slight the Spartans (10-2) season as merely a product of their opposition, a group of level 1 competition, far inferior to 5’s, the PSAL’s highest, and 3’s, the next highest. Even classmates have taken that slant, diminishing their successful season. The Spartans could care less.
“They are happy they’re the champs,” Weitzen said.
Elation would better describe this ending. Instead of absorbing crushing losses over the season’s first few months, they celebrated blowout victories. In addition, after a late-season awakening, they hoisted a championship crown. No one can take that away. Not even a tardy bus or lengthy delay.
“We stepped it up in the playoffs when it counted,” Cerna said. “It makes it a lot sweeter that we beat the two teams that took away our undefeated season from us.”